Ether compounds have been heretofore widely used as a variety of pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals, functional materials, fragrances or cosmetics, components of various chemicals, or their raw materials, their synthetic intermediates and the like. As a method for producing the ether compounds, it has been known that a method of obtaining an ether compound by alkylation of an alcohol compound is useful, and various reagents and reaction modes have been proposed with regard to the alkylation reaction.
On the other hand, as methods for obtaining the ether compounds from carbonyl compounds in one step, for example, there have been known a method of hydrogenating a carbonyl compound and an alcohol compound in the presence of an acidic substance and a hydrogenation catalyst (Non-Patent Documents 1 and 2), a method of treating a carbonyl compound and an alcohol compound with a trialkylsilane under an acidic condition (Non-Patent Document 3), and the other methods.